Thursday, September 11, 2003

Daydreams

For some reason recently I've been paying more attention to the subject of daydreams. By far the biggest imagination-topics for me are music and dance, though I suppose that's maybe no huge surprise. In my head I can evoke the entire range of human emotion on a huge selection of instruments. It reminds me a little of the pianist character in An American in Paris, and the daydream sequence to Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F. But it rarely involves pieces of music that I actually play, or even recognize. It's more frequently improvised magic that I would never be able to replicate in real life, which is probably why I have such a hard time composing. I can have a gorgeous feeling and concept in my head and yet have no clue how to translate it into actual notes. I suppose I need to get better at improvising in order to get better at composing. But that's a tangent.

And then there's dancing, which again involves music, of course. What makes my inner dancing so fascinating is not so much any particular moves so much as a complete and total integration with the music. It's as if the music and the dance are created in unison, from a single thought. Tango is excellent for this, though swing and waltz are right up there as well. Having a partner that I feel close to and connected with is also essential, and everything ultimately just ties into one beautiful, inextricable synthesis of people, music and motion. That's the ideal that I keep in my mind, and all the best dances of my life are ones that inch me a little bit closer to it.

If I extend the general theme of my daydreams, I see that really they are almost all about creativity. I've had far more ideas for drawings, paintings and craft projects than I will ever actually create, but it's fun sometimes just to be an artist in your mind, even if your creations are never brought to life. I also imagine myself writing long, thought-provoking, witty blog entries (I'll try to let you know if I come up with one), or even fiction, which is a much farther leap from reality for me. But music and dance are the big ones, the ones that can literally make my heart beat faster just from the magic I create in my head. It's the creative force behind it all that makes it magic.

In short -- concepts are good, but I'm still working on implementation. Probably always will be. :-)